“Good afternoon, chosen one,” she said.
Sera tried to laugh, but it sounded as forced as it felt. “Come now, I am still only Sera.”
Plenna did not seem to know what to say to that. Jaycin slipped her arm around Plenna’s waist and nodded a bit more genially.
“Good afternoon,” she said, but Sera didn’t fail to notice that she hadn’t used her name either.
She wanted to dissolve, disappear. She wanted everything to go back to the way it had been, when she was just an odd, curious girl, nothing more. The eyes on her were like needles pricking her skin. So she took a deep breath and dove into the Estuary, kicking with her strong legs, propelling herself through the water. Under here, there was no sound. The sun trout did not care if she was the chosen one. The silence pressed blissfully against her eardrums, the water rippling over her bare skin.
She swam and swam, surfacing just once for air before she reached the opposite shore.
She sat on the muddy bank, keeping only her head above the water, watching as the playing and laughing and joking resumed now that she’d left. A pall had been lifted. She watched as Plenna washed Heena’s back, then leaned forward to kiss her shoulder. Heena smiled and closed her eyes. Jaycin took advantage of the moment and splashed them both. Heena shrieked and laughed, and she and Jaycin fell kissing into the water while Plenna shook her head and pretended to be exasperated.
All she wanted, and all she would never have. The agony of losing her world expanded inside Sera’s chest.
A blue-haired head popped up beside her and she let out a shriek of fright.
“I may not be as fast a swimmer,” Leela said, settling herself to sit in the mud beside Sera, “but I can hold my breath longer than you.”
“That’s true,” Sera said. Then she nudged Leela with her shoulder. “You are also much better at convincing Freeda to sneak us an extra plum or two from the orchards.”
Leela grinned. “Because I am so sweet, no one can resist me.”
Sera giggled and it felt good. It felt real. She hoped Leela knew how much she needed her; how much her friendship meant, on this day especially, when everything was so scary and strange.
“But,” Leela continued, “you are better at making Acolyte Imima’s head spin with all your questions about the Moon Daughters.”
“That’s enough, Sera!” the two girls said together in their best impressions of Acolyte Imima’s whiny, nasal voice, before collapsing into laughter. Sera let her head sink under the water, and when she came back up, her brief moment of good humor vanished.
“I wish they would not treat me like I am a stranger,” she said, staring across the bank.
Leela gripped her hand. “You are a Cerulean. You are not a stranger.”
Sera wanted to smile, but her mouth couldn’t seem to remember the shape. “I am different and this proves it. I wonder if it makes them all feel better, somehow, or relieved. I wonder if they will even miss me when I am gone.”
The word gone hung between them, swaying back and forth heavily like a pendulum.
Leela put both her hands on Sera’s shoulders, her blue eyes darkening. “I know that we are meant to trust Mother Sun and the High Priestess. I know this ceremony is necessary. I know it is best for our people. But . . .” She glanced left to right, then held out her finger.
I hate it. Leela’s heart spoke the word with force, with fire behind it, and Sera gasped and pulled her hand away.
Hate was worse than being frightened or angry. Hate was not an acceptable word or feeling in the City Above the Sky. The Cerulean did not hate.
“I hate that they are taking you away from me,” Leela whispered, as if she could sense that Sera needed to hear the word aloud. “I hate that you were chosen. I hate that I will be left alone, to live the rest of my life without you.” A tear fell from Leela’s eye and landed with a tiny plink in the water. “I hate that I cannot do anything to help.”
Sera felt as though someone with very big hands was clamping them around her throat. She looked at Leela’s warm, open, loving face and held out her glowing finger.
Their magic shone together, and Sera poured all the love she had for her friend into the connection. Every memory, every moment. She gave Leela her heart, all of it, every last shred.
Love, love, love.
There was only one thing she held back, the thing she always did. Even in this bleak time, Sera would not relinquish it.
She felt Leela’s love fill her up, their hearts beating in unison. They stayed like that, the Estuary breaking in tiny waves against their bodies, until at last Leela looked up and her eyes were dry.
“Let’s go see the dress your green mother is preparing,” she said. “I’m sure it will be beautiful.”
Sera nodded and swallowed her fear. She glanced across the water to where their clothes lay out on the bank with so many others.
“I would prefer to take the long way back, if you don’t mind,” Leela said, standing and wringing the water out of her hair. “We will dry off as we walk.”
Sera knew she was only saying that to help her—that she had sensed Sera’s reluctance to return to the opposite shore, even if it meant leaving her robe behind. Surely her mothers would not mind. She would not need robes soon anyway.
Leela helped her to her feet. “We will have to stop at my dwelling first,” she said with a sly grin. “And don’t worry, I have told my mothers that under no circumstances are they to call you the chosen one or any other such thing.”
“Thank you,” Sera said. “It’s just awful, isn’t it? Everyone gaping at me and saying ‘praise her.’”
“I wonder if Koreen will suddenly act as if you are best friends now that you are so popular.”
“I wouldn’t call it popular.”
“I bet you could get her to do anything you want,” Leela said wistfully, tugging on a lock of her hair.
“Trying to get the chosen one to abuse her power already?” Sera teased.
“Oh, it would be fun. Imagine the pranks you could pull. I bet Freeda would give you as many plums as you wanted now if you asked.”
They arrived at Leela’s house, and she lent Sera a robe but made her wait in the sitting room while she changed in her room. Leela’s mothers were kind to her as they always were, no trace that there was anything different about today, and Sera was grateful for it.
When they returned to Sera’s dwelling, they found that Sera’s green mother had truly outdone herself.
The cloudspun dress fell in ripples to the floor, the fabric so light and glittering Sera wondered if she had spun the thread and woven the fabric this very day. It was adorned with new rose blossoms and baby’s breath. On her head, her green mother placed a wreath of bright purple forget-me-nots. When Sera saw herself in the looking glass, she had to admit the overall effect was very becoming. She had never truly liked her reflection. Leela clapped her hands and cried, “Oh, Sera, you are a vision!”
Her orange mother knelt before her and tied three strings of stargems—one purple, one green, one orange—around Sera’s left wrist.
“Oh, Mother,” Sera gasped with delight, holding them up. The tiny little lights that shone within each gemstone seemed to wink at her.
“We had them specially made,” her orange mother said, her voice trembling. “For your birthday this year.”